


Mishmash, and it's various synonyms

by Elyssian



Series: Agglomeration, and it's various synonyms [2]
Category: Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms, Fate/stay night - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21707701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elyssian/pseuds/Elyssian
Summary: A collection of vague pieces, like the nightmares of Okita Souji, the habits of Semiramis, and Edmond Dantes' opinion on dreams.
Relationships: Amakusa Shirou Tokisada | Ruler/Semiramis | Assassin of Red, Sakata Kintoki | Berserker/Shuten-douji | Assassin
Series: Agglomeration, and it's various synonyms [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/538561
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	1. Dream

“Do you know the feeling… of a dream?”

“… what kind of dream?”

“A long dream. A very long dream.” 

“A nightmare? One that never seems to end? Or a blissful sleep, one that makes you regret waking?”

“Ah, both. A very long nightmare, where you are dying slowly, alone, as the world leaves you by. A very long dream of bliss, where everything is perfect and whole. I feel like I am haunted by one while I live out the other. I cannot tell which is real.”

The cherry blossoms fall in a lazy spiral. Her hair used to be that colour. Ah, no. What is she talking about? Her hair has always been the colour of day-old ash. 

“What are you on about Okita?” 

The gruff voice emerges from the room. She does not need to turn to picture the man leaning against the wall, his uniform clean and prim, a sheathed katana resting nearby. It was a Tachi he had commissioned at Kondo’s request, an elegant blade to match their growing prestige. 

“Just a mood.”

“A nonsensical one,” he huffs, and Okita’s companion at the balcony laughs. 

“I could remind you of your waxing poetries from your youth, Toshizo.” 

Kondo Isami is a shadow in the sun, hazy in her vision. She cannot see his face clearly through the sleepy haze, but the memory of a smile is enough. The content warmth of spring breaking into summer makes Okita feel soft and unmoored- a paper boat idling down a stream. 

It feels like a dream, and she’s never been more terrified. 

* * *

The nightmare begins like this;

Okita Souji is 25 years old and the captain of the first unit of the esteemed Shinsengumi. Every soul in Edo either sings praises for the captain or spit curses at the manslayer who’s skill is nigh unchallenged across the land. 

Okita Souji is 25 years old and with every breath she takes blood gurgles in the back of her throat. Every night she coughs wrack her body and her bedsheets come away stained red. When the men she captained station themselves in the Tohoku region, Okita lies dying over hundreds of kilometres away, too weak even lift her sword. 

The scent of blood from those she’d cut down used to haunt her- the remnants of ghosts she couldn’t fully stamp out with words like ‘duty’ and ‘patriotism’. Now it is her blood haunting her, weighing down her lungs and crawling up her throat. Sometimes she wishes she could cut herself open and bleed out her sickness, letting it run until it was all gone so she could stitch herself back up and be as good as new. 

But then she wakes up, or falls asleep, and perhaps here is the greater nightmare. 

Okita Souji is 27, a captain of the Shinsengumi and she’s never gotten sick in her entire life. 

The Bakufu reign strong, the might and glory of the great Shinsengumi perfectly executing their will across Edo. Under their commander Kondo Isami, whom Okita notes to be 34 years old, their forces flourish. When they walk the streets the people of Edo cheer purely, casting a light without shadow. They praise the commander, who brought the great criminal Sakamoto Ryouma to justice and ended the era of anti-Bakufu terrorism. Everything simple- childishly so. When Okita walks the street with her Haori on her shoulders the people cheer.

_Praise be, praise be, praise be unto you._

They were the heroes, they had vanquished their enemies, and good and evil stood at opposite ends of a spectrum divided by thick walls. 

Kondo Isami was a good person, and the good were rewarded, not killed and put on display. 

Thusly, Okita Souji had never been sick a day in her life. She was good. Of course. She had been rewarded with a near-perfect life without want, decorated and rich. Her family is well-fed, her friends are all alive and her Shinsengumi stands strong. 

Everything is perfect, except for the fact that everything is a lie.


	2. The Dreamcatcher of Monte Cristo

_“It seems rather cruel to make you hold all our nightmares.”_

_An indifferent shrug. “I don’t mind.”_

* * *

In between the walls of Chaldea, slipping between the shadows, is the Count of Monte Cristo. Vengeful, bitter, loyal.

A glorified dreamcatcher.

He peruses what trickles through his master’s bonds, strands of colours that swirl and swirl together until they become an ugly cesspool. He sifts through the rot and filth, plucking out dreams of gore and rape between his fingers and burning them into nothingness. There are as many good men as they are not in Chaldea’s colourful roster of servants. There are thusly as many nightmares as there are dreams.

* * *

Dantes watches them slip through his fingers.

Some servants have dreams he rarely has to burn, only gently pruned when the dreams reach a bulk too great for one night of rest.

_(If his master is tired, truly worn down, he stems the flow as best as he can.)_

_(Dantes would never let his master see his dreams- they deserve better than his stained, bitter memories.)_

_(He will spare them pieces of memory- the memory of saltwater kissing his cheeks sometimes, the faded recollection of how his skin would warm under the sun after toiling at the deck. But these memories are so tattered, so old- he’s lucky to remember them at all.)_

* * *

Some people, rarely have nightmares.

Little Nursery Rhyme’s dreams play like fairy tales- the good kinds reserved for picture books with bright colours and happy endings. He lets them through almost always when they appear, saving one or two for future rainy days.o\ 

_(He burns the memories of the white-haired girl, barely a girl, barely alive, bedridden and dying.)_

* * *

Some have better dreams than he expected.

Her royal highness Marie Antoinette, as darkly stained the final years of her life had been, dreams of love with such an intensity it’s fragments repulse Dante’s existence, Avenger as he is. Love for her people, her country, her children. Love that fought hatred and disillusionment at every turn and won. It mystifies Dantes. Love is not something he is capable of in this state, not so strongly. He has memories of it from before the Chateau, has a vague notion of achieving it after his revenge, but both times are foreign to him. All he has is the tantalising dregs of it.

But the Queen of France an incarnation of love itself- love at its most formless, most boundless. Dantes knows the _him_ in Chaldea proper, solid and burning, has never met her face to face. Not for lack of trying on her part, but Dantes is nothing if not elusive.

Some have almost no good dreams, like Lobo. Dantes has lost count of how many times he’s burnt away the taste of human blood, the distant cries of a wolf in pain. The taint of an avenger is one he is familiar with, the damning inability to do anything but hate and hate and hate.

But.

Sometimes he glimpses open plains, the greenest of grasses slipping away underfoot as the dreamer bounds through the earth like a rogue wind. A brush against his fingers and Dantes’ lungs ease and for a moment- for a moment he doesn’t feel cold or smell the damp of a dungeon. He lets master enjoy these dreams to their utmost, the euphoria of an open sky and a warm sun so very infectious the next morning.

_(He allows himself a peak. These are dreams for his master, and he can’t take them for himself. But he always allows himself a peek. It is too sombre without these peeks. Dantes does this because he has come to love this master of his, so warm and lovely, but Dantes knows that not even he comes without limits.)_

* * *

Amakusa’s dreams are strange.

There is fire, there is gore, in all its cruel vividness but there is no substance, no detail. The red runs so thinly it is nearly grey, and when Dantes steps in out of curiosity all he feels is hollow detachment. Despite walking the dream from the view of its owner, Dantes vision resembles that of a moviegoer perusing a silent film.

“You are an unusual sight.”

Amakusa is younger, here. His shoulders have only begun to broaden, and the fat of youth has not yet fully left his face. His clothes are simple, torn and ash streaked, and across his Adam's apple is a messy line that bleeds.

“I am merely satisfying a curiosity. I will leave if you wish me to.”

_(This is not his dream. He has no real power, no true authority in here. If Ruler actively rejects his presence, nothing short of pure force will keep Dantes in. And he;d rather not use force.)_

Amakusa shakes his head in slow, careful movements. His hair, ending unevenly at his neck, sticks to the still-wet blood on his skin.

“I do not mind. Go wherever you wish.”

They part ways- Amakusa fading into the sea of bodies that drown the earth and Dantes into the castle that looms ahead.


	3. Bite

Shirou had come to notice that Semiramis had a habit.

He had noticed other habits before of course- people were riddled with them, consciously or not. Semiramis liked to flick her hair over her shoulder to punctuate sentences, accompanied by sharp grins and an offhand motion. She would flick her pen before writing, and dip her spoon in every drink before a taste. Shirou found these endearing and in time they became softly familiar to him.

But this habit, which he had no opportunity to notice until their relationship had deepened, was a different kind of habit. It was a more… intimate habit.

* * *

  
The first time it had happened, they were both drowsy in the unknown hours of the night. Shirou had his back to her in their bed, reaching out for the glass of water he had stirred awake for. As with every time he made large movements in bed, Semiramis arms came to snake around his chest, tugging softly. And _not_ as with every time he moved, the sound of sleepy breathing came closer to him, and he felt teeth brush across his ears.

Shirou paused. “Semiramis?”

There was silence- but she moved closer, nuzzling the crook of his neck. She stilled, and Shirou counted the soft, even, rise and fall of her chest in his head. She was still asleep, and now balancing her head against him he carefully moved for the glass he had failed to grasp-

It happened again, the barest scrape of teeth, this time against the flesh of his nape.

“Semiramis, are you awake?”

There was a sleepy mumble, and he was pulled back down to the bed, secured in the empress’s arms. He would have to forgo the water then.

* * *

  
It happened again- or more likely, he had only managed to notice it again, weeks after, in the brief wait before a rayshift home.

Up ahead their master chattered with Angra Mainyu, who was pointing out and naming the flowers that framed the edges of the field they were waiting on. Boudica and Medea were lingering near them, surprised at the avenger’s unexpected knowledge. It was a sentiment Shirou shared.

  
He had opted to stay away from the group, surveying their surroundings. It was unnecessary- flat, open fields stretched out for miles around them, illuminated by a near full moon on a cloudless night. But they were all tired, after an unexpected group of Spriggans had gotten the jump on them. And Shirou loved her dearly, but he would not lie and say Semiramis was not snappish at best when she was tired. So at a distance he stood, with the black-haired assassin at his elbow, half leaned against him.

Her brows were furrowed, though there was no real annoyance in her features. It was akin to a silent whining, but Semiramis would never be caught dead doing such a thing. Her ears were twitching, and Shirou resisted the urge to touch them. She got violently embarrassed whenever he did that in public, and Shirou would like to keep his experience of being smacked with a spiked hand at a grand tally of _once._

(It was rather unexpectedly, rather painful.)

  
So Shirou had been there- he has reiterated this point too much- watching the field with his eyes and watching Semiramis with everything else when he feels it. A pressure on his shoulder, light through the layers of his clothes. He turns his head to make out Semiramis’s lip on his cape. He sees the faintest flash of white teeth. The pressure increases, abates, and moves.

  
She’s nibbling on him.

  
He turns away, and the pressure disappears as she huffs. “Why is the rayshift taking so long?”

He hums, a noise to fill the silence, and she asks, “Why are you blushing?”

Against his better judgement and the loud protests of his rationality, he succinctly delivers words he only slightly regrets.

  
“I thought you looked cute just now.”

He receives no less than a sharp bite on his shoulder and produces a somewhat undignified yelp.

* * *

Semiramis had fangs, Shirou had realised. He had suspected this since their first meeting, when he called her Assassin and she called him Master, with the grace of a queen granting honour. He confirmed this when he had first seen her bloody, the marks left behind by Clarent deep and wide, and she had growled and raged and demanded he _make. his. move._

  
Semiramis had fangs, and sometimes she had the munchies, and Shirou was apparently the go-to for munching things.

Now, he would often wake to find her teething at his arm, or his neck. And after that, getting an unexpected nip in the shoulder while they were in public became commonplace. Shirou had come upon the period of time where he was as passive-aggressively as possible avoiding William and the gleeful glint in his eyes. To be precise, he had reached the point wherein the moment he saw the playwright open his mouth, he would dissolve into spirit form immediately and exit the room. It was on one such escape that he had materialised in a separate hallway, only to run right onto Achilles. The rider had grinned at the sight of him, the same way William did, and the only thing that stopped Shirou from dematerialising again was the silent resignation that he could not outrun a persistent Achilles, and persistent did the Rider appear to be. He’d have to just bite the bullet now.

“So, is the biting thing a kinky thing, or…?”

  
Shirou could march forty thousand outgunned peasants against the shogunate with no hesitation but he apprently could _not_ have this discussion. It must have shown on his face, because Achilles started to laugh, loud and booming and not unkind.

  
“Don’t be shy! The missus bites me too, ya know? I think it has to do with the fangs? She says they itch or something.”

  
So it was like teething, was it?

“But not public like that- or all soft and mushy- the teeth mostly comes out when-”

Shirou really doesn’t need any of this. In seconds, the only thing indicating his presence there is a disappearing shower of gold.

* * *

Semiramis never actually breaks his skin.

  
‘Nibble’ is a fairly accurate description of what’s happening. She nibbles on his arm mostly, nibbles his shoulder when she’s half-asleep with her head in the crook of his neck. She nibbles on his fingers one day, when Shirou takes the chance to try something like spoiling her, delivering small squares of brownies to her mouth with his fingers. He fights the urge to coo. Cooing is bad, regardless of how cute Semiramis looks like right now. She’ll most definitely bite a finger off.


	4. Lightning in a cup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kintoki falls in love with a demon.
> 
> (Kimetsu No Yaiba AU)

The edge of Kintoki’s sword shone gold. 

“And it burns,“ Shuten told him. She got bored in the day, stuck in her box, so she chattered at him from sunrise to sundown.“The cuts you gave me burned for days, refusing to heal right till I tore out the flesh around them with teeth and nails.”

“It’s the lightning doing that, not the blade,” he told her. “Lightning breath user, remember?” 

They were at least a week away from any decent town by now- the shogunate shouldn’t be willing to chase them this deep into the mountains. He told this to Shuten the last time they stopped to rest, and the demon had snickered. 

“The shogunate wouldn’t work themselves too hard, yes, but I think your dear mother would.”

“Well,” Kintoki swallowed. He wasn’t sure if he could outrun Raikou when it came down to it. “We’ll cross that bridge when we-”

“I mean, we’ve practically eloped. What mother wouldn’t feel the least bit stung that her precious boy ran off with his bride without saying goodbye?”

“Shuten!”

She giggled at him. 

* * *

The problem with demons was numerous. 

The weakest were stronger than ten men, and the strongest on par with armies. Demon slayer’s fought tooth and nail for the ability to reach them, and sometimes it was just barely. 

This hadn’t been a problem for Raikou. Raikou had been different since birth, different the way Kintoki was, more than the way Kintoki was. Kintoki could lift boulder’s in his youth- Raikou could blast them apart. Kintoki could understand animals so well it could be said he could communicate with them- the sight of Raikou struck animals with fear and reverence so deep they either fled, became servile, or died. It was why Raikou took him in, he knew, because she knew all the troubles being different brought and wished not to see them again. Remembering this made Kintoki feel guilty for running away. 

“If you feel guilty, you should go back.” 

Night had well and truly fallen now, so Shuten had emerged from her box to dip her toes in the river, complaining of sweat and stuffiness. (Did demons sweat? Kintoki never thought about that. They’d have to drink to sweat though, and demons didn’t seem to need to drink? But Shuten drank. She drank a lot and- he should stop thinking about this.)

“That guilt will create openings to exploit in battle.”

“Shuten you’re real good at reading people huh?” Kintoki remarked brightly. And she was. She beat him with words alone first time they met. Kintoki always thought he was decent at reading people but Shuten was amazing at it. 

The boar he’d caught earlier was nearly done roasting. “You’re smart with a lot of stuff!”

Shuten sighed at him. “Unlike you, I suppose. What kind of demon slayer runs off with the demon he’s supposed to kill?”

The question of the century. 

Kintoki shook his head. Don’t think about it, just cut the meat. You know the answer already, just gotta commit to it. 

The smell of cooked boar grew stronger, and when Shuten turned her heard towards the appetizing smell, she found an arrangement of diced meat on a shoddy wooden plate being placed on the rocks beside her. 

“The kind of demon slayer that’s in love, I think!”

* * *

The problem with demons, is that they proliferated endlessly from an unknown source. Was it a sect? A progenitor? Could the natural mating of demons just produce this effect? 

The demon’s they caught couldn’t remember. All they knew was that one day, they were human, and then the next, they were demons. Some weren’t even sure they had been human. Some were so sure they’d been born demons. They couldn't tell which were lies and which were the truth. Many believed the former idea. It was easier, to kill that way. Raikou did. Kintoki didn't. 

“I think I was human once,” Shuten tells Kintoki as they walk. The sun is high above they’re heads, so Shuten is safely tucked in her box, speaking through the wood. “I think no demons were born demons. We were made, infected- I am almost completely sure about this.”

Kintoki hums thoughtfully, trudging through the forest. The vegetation is dense here, the trees tall. Some of it spills out of the valley and into the numerous caves in the mountainside. Finding such a cave would be good for Shuten. Technically. The more he thinks about it the more he hears the inevitable complaints about the damp, dreary caves. 

“What do you remember about being a human?” Kintoki asks. “You said you think you were human- some old memory tip you off?”

Shuten hums. “Something like that. What I remember are merely faded recollections, so vague they could as well be dreams.” 

The walk is silent after that, interrupted by the sounds of the forest around them and Kintoki’s breathing. 

“I wasn’t peasantry, I’m sure. I remembered brightly dyed clothes, elaborate hairpins.” Shuten offers. “I think my hair was longer. I feel like my head is lighter now, than it was.” 

Kintoki tried to imagine it. A human Shuten Doji. No horns. No deathly paleness. A bright blue kimono and her long black hair pinned up. Her teeth wouldn’t glint so dangerously when she smiled, and Kintoki wouldn’t have to watch out for her razor-sharp nails when they held hands. 

“Can’t picture it,” he says. 

Shuten giggles. “You have a poor imagination boy.” 

Then she adds, “I’ll show you. Wait till night falls.” 

When the sun begins to lazy drop out of the sky, Kintoki settles down on the thickly intertwined roots of an aged tree. He places them in the shadow of the tree, in case Shuten’s impatience leads to her sticking her head right out without warning. Which she had done before when Kintoki had stopped to readjust his sandals. She’d burned a good bit of her nose and had pouted at him all night long. 

Shuten does not emerge until night has fully fallen, and Kintoki has set up a campfire, the remains of a wandering boar cooking on sticks. Shuten unfolds herself from the box, assembling into a petite girl in a black and purple ensemble. A small frame, fair skin. A pretty porcelain doll by looks lone, until the clouds part for a shaft of moonlight, illuminating fangs and horns and claws.

“Let's have a share a little story,” Shuten says. “An elegant way to pass the time.”

“We’re sitting in the dirt, eating meat off sticks,” Kintoki jokes, but he sits down in front of her, the picture of attention. 

Shuten slides one long nail down her forearm and lets the blood drip to half-full cup of sake she’d set out like she had every night. One drop makes the drink boil, and at the second drop vapour spills out, curling around them. By the third drop, the wound has closed and Shuten’s horns are hidden behind the illusion. 

The imaginary, human Shuten is a sight. Her hair flows down to the ground, meeting the flowing hems of her now elaborate kimono. It is bright, yellow with a winding pattern of flowers drifting down a river. More flowers adorn the pins that hold some of Shuten’s hair away from her now rosy face. The intensity of her eyes is gone, the colour less dark somehow- it gives her a doe-like expression. 

Kintoki wrinkles his nose. 

“You look like an entirely different person.” 

“I’m sure that compared to this human, I am an entirely different person,” she curls a lock of hair around her finger and tugs. “Different names, different souls. Different… appetites.” 

Shuten gives her illusory body a twirl. “Wouldn’t you like to spend your nights with this girl?”

Kintoki wonders if this is a game. A test. A way for Shuten to play with the emotions he’s bared to her. Maybe that what she wants to think she’s doing. But Kintoki is not dumb. Maybe he can’t win the palace scholars in competitions of poetry or name every important battle and date to match but Kintoki is not a fool. No, not especially when it comes to people. 

“This isn’t the woman I fell in love with,” he says, reaching for her hand. He watches the way her tiny fingers curl into his palm, watches a waning sliver of moonlight caught on the too-long nails under the thin veneer of illusion. 

“Stupid boy,” Shuten breathes. 

Kintoki smiles and he leans forward to kiss her. 


End file.
